


Remember, I Love You

by AstridMyrna



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Choo Choo Here Comes the Pain Train, Death, Drowning, F/M, Grief/Mourning, I'm coming for your emotions, Implied/Referenced Suicidal Thoughts, Mindfuck, on the nose book name drops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 08:49:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15554058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstridMyrna/pseuds/AstridMyrna
Summary: Before anyone can stop her, Jyn Erso drives up to the mountainside cabin that her and her long time boyfriend Cassian Andor used to share until he drowned in the nearby lake a year ago. She only wants to hike his favorite trails and finish his books so she can put his memory behind her, but the task proves to be more emotionally devastating than she anticipated.





	Remember, I Love You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MorningOwl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorningOwl/gifts).



> So me and MorningOwl challenged ourselves by exchanging moodboards and creating fics from them. Hope you enjoy your journey on the pain train.

 

The day before she told everyone she would leave, Jyn Erso threw her camping gear in her truck and left for the woods.

Her friends told her it was a bad idea. Her parents begged her not to go. Kay offered to go with her so she didn’t have to be alone, but they all missed the goddamn point: she needed to go back up to the cabin that overlooked the misty lake that drowned her boyfriend, Cassian Andor. Three days from now would be the first anniversary of his death, and she needed to be alone and hike their favorite trails, see the sunset on the mountainside, finish the books they left unfinished on his nightstand table, then she would leave it all behind to decay in her memory.

Cassian would have understood, but Cassian was dead now, so…

When she stopped for gas at the last town that would still have cell service, she checked her phone and read the panicked texts after seeing her car gone and reading the note she left on her door that said she decided to leave a day early but would be back on the date she said she would, and then there were the accusations that she was suicidal and the pleas to come back. One would think that, after a year of therapy, volunteer work, and giving up alcohol, her friends and family would trust her more. Her gas pump clunked to a stop, and she threw her cellphone in the glove box before finishing up. There was a landline in the cabin that she’d call from and reassure her parents that she didn’t kill herself.

The radio cut out midway through the winding road, so Jyn listened to the grinding of the road beneath the wheels, the wind cutting through the conifers whose shade barely added any relief from the hot, syrupy air. Even when the road widened and the lake came into view, the air practically crushed her under its compressed heat. She had to travel up higher, under the cocoon of new growth trees that Cassian and Jyn never bothered having removed from their driveway.

The cabin was a surprise inheritance, gifted to Cassian by his grandmother, built by his great-grandfather. A wobbly fence led the way up into the hundred-year old structure, the well-worn path sprouting weeds that would need to be pulled out. That would be a job for the next owners of the cabin, most likely one of Cassian’s nieces that Jyn would gift the deed to, quelling his family’s anger when they all learned that he had willed the deed to her. For now, Jyn hauled five days worth of clothes, food, and other necessities, keeping her eyes to the ground to block out the view of the gleaming lake.

All in all, she was growing proud of the fact that she had remained cool-headed throughout the endeavor so far. Even when she called her parents, her mother berating her for “just taking off like that,” Jyn kept her tone firm and even with them. Yes, she understood their concern. No, they weren’t going to change her mind. She hung up on them, went into the bare bedroom, unzipped her duffle bag, and opened the closet.

Cassian’s parka hung in what should have been an empty closet.

It should have been collected and sent to his family with the rest of his clothes when they cleaned out all of the closets, all of his drawers, all of the places that held evidence that he was alive once. She touched the weather-beaten blue fabric with numb fingers, her fingers climbing up the trail of his sleeve until they got lost in the tangles of the gray fox fur that lined his hood. He loved this coat. It was expensive, but he had worn it ever since he was a teenager, and it held up so well and kept him warm well into his twenties.

Jyn should have pulled away. Should have left it in its closet. Should have burned the whole thing down and drive back to the open arms of her terrified friends and family. Should find a new partner. Should forget that Cassian existed. It was an easier path, but one she didn’t deserve. So she clung onto the parka and eased it off its hanger. She pulled the closet door shut, then sank into a corner to cradle the coat in her lap. She buried her face in the hood and inhaled the pine needle-sharp scent of his shampoo that cut through the must of years-old sweat, but there was one other scent that she could never put her finger on but knew it was him. It was him, it was him, it was him--in the dark she could almost pretend that she was holding him again when he was flushed from a hike instead of the chill of his clammy skin when she pulled him out of the water.

“Oh god,” she whispered, but it grew and grew into a howl that shook the closet doors as it tried to claw its way out.

* * *

 

Jyn had always been the outdoorsy type, being blessed with a restless energy that made it hard to sleep until she worked her body to the bone, whether it be kick-boxing in the winter or backpacking in the summer, which was why she never expected to meet the closest thing to a soul mate at her favorite used bookstore, where she had been perusing the romance section to pick a few to survive the upcoming holidays. But then he walked in from the autumn chill, his blue pea coat buttoned up to the dark stubble of his chin, eyes nearly black when he first entered, but warmed like chocolate as he stepped under the ceiling lamp, a teasing grin on his face and she realized that she was fucking gawking at him and ducked back into the historical romances.

She stayed in the romance section while he passed in and out of her periphery, a thick book under his arm with a creased bookmark marking that either he read a quarter of it or he had a quarter left to read. Soon he picked up a small, slim book that fit in the palm of his hand in his wanderings, and somehow his wanderings led him perusing the books next to her. Jyn bit the bottom of her lip, but pretended that she hadn’t noticed him or his shiny, dark brown hair that fell over his eyes as if perfectly styled by accident.

Her eyes wandered down to the brick of a book he carried, her curiosity getting the better of her: _Cien años de soledad_. And it looked like he had only been through a quarter of it.

“That’s _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ , right? Is it any good?” she couldn’t stop herself from asking.

“It’s a…lot. I’m enjoying it, but you have to pace yourself reading it, so I’m finding something lighter in between,” he said, and then he looked at her with a gentle warmth that sparked the ash in her throat. “Have any recommendations?”

She did, in fact, have a few recommendations that he actually took, but he didn’t ask for her number and she didn’t offer it. He ended up buy the books she recommended, and her cynical self figured he’d just trash them as soon as he got home, but she didn’t want to know for sure. She was content with preserving the fantasy of the man instead of getting to know him enough for the reality to piss on it.

But then Thanksgiving happened and she found herself outside of the bookstore even though she knew it was closed. There was a coffee shop on the corner she knew was open, but she sank on the stoop just big enough to sit on, pull out a book, and read, but the words blurred and she reread the same page five times before she threw it back in her bag and started her first power walk around the block. At the corner coffee shop, with _Cien años de soledad_ in one hand and a coffee in the other, was the man she’d run in just the week before. His head rose as she passed him, but he said nothing. On her second lap the man looked up just in time to catch her eyes, a small smile on his face, his hair streaked with gold from the sunset. On the third lap, he asked if she’d like a coffee, and she only nodded.

On the fifth lap, he asked, “What coffee do you like?”

“Medium, medium roast, black.”

By the sixth lap, he walked out of the shop with both of their drinks, handed hers, and walked with her as she continued her laps. They exchanged names, exchanged numbers, exchanged frustrations with their families, and may as well have exchanged their lives because they were obnoxiously inseparable for the next five years. Despite the times they butted heads, the fantasy paled in comparison the tangible complexities of the man who kept up with her on camping trips, could sit for hours in silence at the bookstore and not need to say a word, who skinny dipped with her on lazy afternoons, and who foraged for the best view of the stars on the hills nearby the cabin.

They had put so much work into sprucing up the cabin when his grandmother died and he discovered that his childhood vacation home was now his responsibility. After Cassian died, she took down the beaded door to their bedroom, the clay cups he bought from Mexico, the wood clock always two hours behind found in a yard sale…she thought she got it all, leaving only the books behind.

Every trip, they brought books to read--too many to be read during their short trips, so they left the ones left unread in the drawer of his night stand table. There were only four left to read: _The Thorn of Emberlain,_ _The Golem and the Jinni_ , _The Lathe of Heaven_ , and _Pedro Páramo_.

If she could stay here just long enough to finish the books, then she could leave here for the last time. She would put the books in his parka and bury it next to the cabin, and that would be it. She would be done, she would put it all behind her like she had pretended to for this past year, and she would allow herself to heal.

It was still light out when she crawled out of the closet, Cassian’s parka held tight against her breast. She laid it out on the side of the bed he always slept in, crossed the arms together and rested the hood on his pillow. Even though her arms trembled with anxiety-fueled energy, she forced herself to put away her belongings, strap on her hiking boots, and grab a water bottle and a flashlight before heading out for her late afternoon hike through forest. She tromped as far and fast away from the lake as she could, all the way up to a small meadow painted pink and orange from the sunset. She embraced the flood of intimate memories as she listened to the hiss of insects announcing the oncoming night.

It was gorgeous and private, perhaps her favorite spot in the forest. She would bury Cassian’s books and coat here.

After she returned from her hike and washed up, she picked the thinnest book out of the pile, _Pedro Páramo_ , to read in bed next to Cassian’s parka. Exhausted from the day, she expected to fall asleep around ten, ten-thirty at the latest, but there was something strange about this book. A man following his mother’s dying wish, goes to the town of Comala to confront his father, but then it switched to the point of view of the main character’s father, and as she read the story switched from character to character like a ghost hopping from body to body, telling fragments of stories that wove the story of the ghosts who lived in town and of Pedro Páramo and Juan Preciado--

It was three in the morning when she finished it, feeling like she understood it completely and yet not at all. She sagged into her pillow, nuzzling the shoulder of Cassian’s parka, when she was pulled under. The golden bedroom light faded away as she sank, every fiber of her being burning to move, to swim up, to get air, it’s been too long since she didn’t have air. She gasped on water, choked on it as it forced its way into her lungs.

She realized now that she was dreaming the pain that Cassian felt as he sank, because it wasn’t painful enough that she was the reason he drowned. He dove under her to tickle her feet, but her leg jerked and kicked him in the stomach. She didn’t know at first, she didn’t realize until the water stilled around her and he didn’t come when she screamed out his name.

“Jyn, oh please God, please,” Cassian chanted, his voice strangled in his throat as he thumped on her chest, water splashing her blue-tinged lips. “Jyn, please, please, please.”

The dream never went so far as to have her be the one to feel his breath fill her throat and push out the water trapped in her lungs. And she passed out before the medics came. Why was the EMT surrounding them, pulling him away as he cried out so desperately that she could feel it chill in her bones.

Jyn jerked awake, tangled in Cassian’s parka with tears on her face. She took in great gulps of air, warmed blood rushing back up into her head, like she had been holding her breath for too long. She stumbled out of bed, squinting at the sunlight that streamed through the windows, and she cursed herself for not shutting the goddamn shutters, but her head ached too sharply to focus on much else but to stumble in the bathroom to get the painkillers from the medicine cabinet.

As she opened the cabinet, she saw a hint of blue, the shadow of a beard, a sunburn on his cheek, his eyes in her reflection--

She slammed the door shut and stared at its mirrored surface, but it was only her puffy-eyed self looking back at her, red splotching her pale cheeks, green eyes as brittle as sea glass.

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and when she opened them she noted the toilet, the bath tub, the chip in the tile in the wall, the half-empty hand soap, and the crystal pendant she always wore. She gripped the sink, grabbed the faucet, touched mirror, and wrapped her fingers around her pendant. She could hear the pulse in her ears, the birds greeting the day, the hum of the fridge. She smelled the chlorine from the toilet and the stale morning air. She tasted her tears that ran over her mouth as she forced herself through this exercise.

It helped put things in perspective: she was just exhausted from not sleeping well because of that weird book that stoked one of her worse nightmares. Her simple task of finishing the books would be harder than she anticipated, but there only three left to read. She had requested two weeks off from work, which was more than enough time to slog through the last three. Today, though, she had to walk in order to rest. She found _Pedro Páramo_ hiding in the folds of her overturned bed sheets and threw it in the drawer with the other books.

After eating breakfast and preparing enough food and drink to last her the day, Jyn packed up her lighter backpack and set off for a day’s worth of hiking. But when she opened the door, she could barely see past her porch due to the rolling fog.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she snapped, stomping her boot on the deck. “It’s was sunny five fucking minutes ago.”

She followed the path down the hill, desperately hoping that she could just walk under the intrusive cloud, but when she felt like she was being suffocated by it when she reached the last part of the fence. There would be no hiking today. Reluctantly, she turned back and followed the fence back up to the cabin. A bath sometimes calmed her nerves, and she could try and nap before attempting one of the other books.

Looking at the cover for _The Lathe of Heaven_ , she guessed it could be a soothing if another strange book that included sea turtles flying in the afternoon sky. She picked up the book to put on her nightstand table when she realized that there were not three books left in Cassian’s drawer, but two.  Jyn set _Lathe_ back in Cassian’s drawer to search for the missing book, shaking out every blanket and sheet before making her bed, scouring under the bed with a flashlight, and pulling out every drawer. When there was no sign of it in the bedroom, she picked apart the rest of the cabin and tore apart her backpack, but came up with nothing.

She checked Cassian’s drawer once more: _The Lathe of Heaven, The Golem and The Jinni, The Thorn of Emberlain._ No _Pedro Páramo._

Her dull headache surged with renewed sharpness against her temple. Fuck, she was stressing herself out too much, she just needed medication and a nap, and she would find it when she wasn’t looking for it. She opened her medicine cabinet again for painkillers, and when she shut the door, Cassian’s weary face looked back at her.

His eyes, his eyes--they’re the cinnamon brown she loved when he was close enough to kiss her, but they’re wide, his eyebrows furrowing together and his mouth falling open but no words came out. Jyn’s fist tightened on the pill bottle, air trapped in her throat because if she breathed she’s convinced that he would disappear. But then his shaking fingers press against his side of the glass, his chest heaving under his white undershirt.

“Jyn?”

She screamed, the bottle clattering on the floor so she could anchor herself to the sink instead of falling on the floor. She should have looked away and not torture herself with these new delusions, but he was right there, pressing his forehead against the invisible partition with tears in his eyes.

“Jyn, please tell me that’s really you,” he whimpered.

She splayed her hand over his, the mirror cold under her palm.

“It’s me, Cassian. Is that you?”

“It is. It is, oh my god, Jyn. How is this happening?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ve both cracked.”

He huffed a laugh that twisted into a sob. Jyn plastered flat her other hand right where she would cradle his cheek.

“I’m so sorry, Cassian,” she sniffed, tasting her tears and thin snot. “I’m so sorry I did this to you.”

“No,” he said, his red-rimmed eyes practically boring into hers. “No, don’t you dare. I should have been more careful--”

“You were! But it was my fault I kicked you, my fault I couldn’t find you in time…” She pressed her burning cheek against the glass and squeezed her eyes shut, because she couldn’t face him like this, taking the blame for something she did.

“What do you mean, you couldn’t find me in time?” Cassian said, his words slow and measured in her ear. “I couldn’t…you sank down so deep, and you were already…Jyn I couldn’t save you.”

She opened her eyes and looked at him, _really_ looked at him. His stubble was thicker and with a touch of gray that she didn’t remember being there before, a new pair of lines carved under his eyes, and his cheeks had hollowed out.

“Cassian, you died. It’s been a year since you died at the lake. You died in my arms, and I was alone--”

“So was I, Jyn,” he said, and inhaled a shaky breath.

She pursed her lips as her mind tried jam these puzzling pieces together until they stuck.

“I had a dream last night, but I was drowning and you were trying to resuscitate me. Did you dream of drowning too?”

He leaned back from the mirror, his hair stringy against his paling face. “No, I was trying to save you again. But yesterday, when I opened the closet to put away my clothes, it was supposed to be empty--”

“But there was something in it. Your parka.”

“Your scarf, your favorite green one.”

“How is this happening?” Jyn echoed, a stinging new hope blooming in her chest.

“I don’t know but I’m grateful for it. I missed you so much, Jyn.”

His voice cut out, and she had to stamp down the urge to shatter the mirror that separated them so she could comfort him. It was a miracle that they were able to connect for this long, but who knew how much time they had left.

“We’ll figure something out, Cassian. We need to find other ways to communicate because we can’t rely on this. Try everything you can.”

He tightened his lips into a grim line and gave her a short nod, but his eyes were still unbearably kind. “Remember, I love you.”

She couldn’t see him through her tears. “I lov--”

She blinked, and he was gone.

She blinked again, falling forward until she caught herself on the sink, but he was still gone.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled deeply, counted to five, exhaled slowly. Her eyes opened and she only saw her reflection. She blinked five times, ten times, fifteen, twenty, twenty--

She lost count after forty-five, and by then couldn’t stand her reflection anymore. She released her grip on the sink and lowered herself on to the bath mat and pressed her spine against the tub, its once glossy white surface now dull with dust. Her old tears dried on her cheeks as she stared at the toilet, her mind wringing itself in her skull as it tried to decipher what had just happened, how Cassian could still be alive, talking to her and crying with her as they tried to make sense of the madness, because to anyone else this would be madness.

In another universe, Cassian Jeron Andor was still alive and waiting for her.

Her head wobbled back against the tub, and she passed out trying to digest the truth whole.

* * *

 

Neck aching from her seven-hour nap against the bathtub, Jyn scrubbed herself raw before returning to the bedroom and slipping into his parka, crossing the arms over her torso like he did when an early snowfall powdered the cabin and the jacket she wore wasn’t warm enough, so he opened his parka and tucked her in so they could stay out a little longer.

When she woke on yet another foggy morning, she tried opening and closing the medicine cabinet to no avail. Her mirror steamed up when she ran the hot water to wash her face, and in a split-second moment wrote his name in the mist before it disappeared. She waited for a response, but when one didn’t come she breathed on it and wrote a word or two just in case he could see her words but for some reason she couldn’t see his. She checked the closet for any new items from him, but nothing. She made another fruitless search for _Pedro Páramo_ . Frustrated and stir-crazy from being unable to hike out on the trail, she decided to sit down with _The Lathe of Heaven_.

The main character, Orr, could change reality with his dreams. Her hands trembled as Orr feared the power she desperately wanted to reunite with Cassian. The story did give an idea, however, one that would require a bottle of wine and curling Cassian’s parka to help lull her to sleep. Before she knew it, she was tailing him in a crowded marketplace somewhere in the desert, but it was cold enough for her to wear her green scarf over her head and Cassian to don his parka, but they were both on edge and armed to the teeth.

A cry brought her attention up to the sky, which glowed a venomous green over a frost-bitten meadow. She heard it again, only it ended with a hiss as Cassian braced his ankle in his hands and Jyn kneeled next to him and put his foot in her lap to get a better look at it.

“Do you think you sprained it?” she said, gently pressing her fingers against his skin.

“No, I’ve had enough of them to know. I think I strained it a little.” He reached over and laced his fingers with hers, and together they massaged it. “It feels better already.”

It was the day before she drowned, and she should have said that they she should stay in tomorrow and find _Pedro Páramo_ , Cassian said he brought it with him on this trip but it was nowhere to be found and they were both in the mood for a ghost story.

Jyn woke up nearly blinded by the morning sunlight too bright for her dark mood, but it meant that she could finally walk out her frustrations. She had a quick breakfast and didn’t even bother with the water bottle (she’d go back and get it after her short walk), but she did tuck her copy of _Lathe_ in the back of her shorts in case she struck the mood to read again. Even though she hated to admit it, the lake was glorious that morning, like a polished sapphire set between the mountains reflected in its pristine surface. It was barely nine in the morning and her back was slick with sweat. Maybe she should go back for the water bottle, because her brain floated in a simmer of its juices by the time she reached the bottom of the hill and started on the main dirt road that curved around the lake. It hadn’t been this hot since…Jyn stopped in her tracks, racked her brain to remember the date. When that failed, she counted the days since the gas station.

Her heart leaped in her throat, but she swallowed it down with the last drops of the saliva in her mouth. If she turned back now, maybe he would show himself in the mirror again. _It is our anniversary_ , she thought bitterly. Seeing him in the mirror, knowing that he still lived in a separate universe, may have been an early gift. Weeks after he died, she told her therapist that if she had a choice, she’d rather drown instead of him. He would be able to handle all the emotional fallout from friends and family so much more effectively than she could. He’d be able to get through the night without having to cry himself to sleep. But when she stared at him in the mirror, he looked like a man whose soul had been hollowed out.

 _Lathe_ wiggled in her pocket until she shoved it further down, and her thoughts again went to the man who altered reality with his dreams. She had dreamed so many times of him sputtering to life, the blue in his face burned away into red as he gasped for air, but she also dreamed of dying in his arms instead when it became too painful to wake up and remember that she hadn’t saved him.  

She marched towards the shore, pulling her shoes and socks off as she approached the water line. It was so hot that the small waves rolling over her feet were as warm as bath water. She walked until the edges of her shorts dampened with the cool water the flowed from the deeper parts of the lake. Cold relief flooded up her body, but her scalp burned under the sun.She looked through her distorted reflection as her feet kicked up clouds of sediment that billowed up to her knees. A ripple scattered her image, but when the water stilled, Cassian’s eyes blinked on her reflection.

Jyn stumbled back and cried out when she destroyed her reflection again. She hunched over the spot and held still, her hands hovering over the surface as the tiny, tight waves smoothed out into longer lumps that could hold an image--and there he was: his image translucent and nearly melding with the dark sediment below, but he was there. His hands reached out to her, his fingers growing longer as he touched the surface, that atom-thick barrier determined to keep them separated.

It wouldn’t work, but she couldn’t let him disappear again.

Without a thought she dove in after his image, and for a split second felt his hair in her hand. Her eyes popped open and she could see a smudge of something moving in the dark belly of the lake where Cassian sank. Her lungs burned as she swam because she didn’t save a breath big enough for a journey like this and she hadn’t swum in a year, and every stroke grew slower and slower, burning needles jabbing the back of her eyeballs as they rolled back and water pressure cracked the cartilage in her nose.

* * *

Air gushed down her windpipe, and a spasm in her chest made her vomit lake water back up into the mouth sealed over hers. Trembling hands turned her to her side and thumped against her back to help her spew more water out while her rescuer spit. She knew who had saved her from the grooves on his fingers that pressed against the side of her neck to find her pulse to the shape of his lips as he gave her two deep breaths that triggered something in her that made her fight for her own air, and when he broke away she gasped for breath and coughed when she took in too much.

His hand burned against her cheek, and she heard his fist squelch with mud on the other side of her head.

“Breathe, Jyn, just breathe. I’ve got you,” Cassian said.

Forcing her eyes to peel open, she saw Cassian, alive and hunched over her, his chest heaving under his drenched shirt. He pressed his lips into a hard line like he always did to keep his emotions in check, but if she had the strength Jyn would have run her fingers through his beard to remind him that he never had to hold back from her.

Panic flooded her gut as she felt her eyelids droop from the strain of staying conscious. She took in another deep breath and focused on his brown eyes with glints of gold in them, like the sunrise on the lake. If this was another trick of the universe, and she either woke up on the shore or never woke up again, then she had to finish what she started.

“Love you,” she whispered.

* * *

A headache throbbed in her temple, so she must be alive.

She stirred in bed and moaned when she fell out of her warm spot, but then strong arms secured her against the chest that burned like a furnace. Her nose, tickled by the soft, overgrown stubble, caught a whiff of pine.

“Cassian,” she mumbled in his bare shoulder. She realized now that they were both naked and nestled under what had to be every blanket and quilt stored in the cabin. “Cass--”

The name scratched against her rough, dry throat, and Cassian jolted awake. He helped her sit up under the mountain of bedding and offered her a thermos cupful of lukewarm lemon tea with so much honey in it that it was almost too sweet to drink as he carefully poured mouthful after mouthful until she pushed the cup away. He reached over to his table and put the cup on top of the two copies of _Lathe_ on the nightstand table.

He licked his lips, then said, “You were freezing--”

She grabbed his face and smashed his mouth against hers, her nose all bent out of shape against his and it was so hard to breathe with her tongue wrapping over his but she leaned into the lightheaded sensation. He pinched her chin between his knuckle and thumb and gently disentangled from her. Jyn panted over his face, no longer sallow, but amber with a healthy flush of pink on his cheeks.

“You’re still too cold,” he said, kissing her lips. “Too cold.”

He kissed all the way down to her throat, his mouth warm over her pulse. His body shook when he inhaled sharply and he tried to pull away, but Jyn cinched her arms over his back and pulled him to her. She nuzzled his hair, fresh tears watering his roots.

Her teeth scraped against his ear when she murmured, “But I’m getting warmer.”

 


End file.
